The end could be nearer than you think
Paul Craig Roberts
Eastern and southern Ukraine are Russian-speaking former Russian territories added to Ukraine in the 1950s by the Communist Party leadership of the Soviet Union. These provinces are agitating to be returned to Mother Russia where they certainly belong. They are determined not to be part of a neo-nazi regime that will be looted by Western bankers and corporations and be forced to host US missile bases that will make western Ukraine a target for nuclear annihilation, like Poland and Czech Republic.
The propagandistic rhetoric issuing from the mouths of the White House Fool and the excrement that the Fool placed in charge of the Department of State is designed to cover up the abject failure of the Obama regime’s plot to install its puppets as Ukraine’s new rulers. The Obama regime is too stupid to comprehend that its rhetoric is preparing the gullible and ignorant American population for war with Russia. The neoconservative ideologues, who have been lusting for war with Russia ever since the 1980s when I was a member of the Committee on the Present Danger, will take advantage of the war preparation, which the White House Fool and his State Department excrement are creating with their rhetoric, to start a war that will destroy life on earth.
The neoconservatives are insane. They believe that nuclear war can be won, and that the US has the advantage to destroy Russia in a first strike.
Americans are so ignorant and gullible that they do not realize that their very existence is on the line, and that the insane neoconservatives who control the weak Obama puppet are determined to cross the line.
If any are still so gullible as to believe that the illegal deposing of the elected government of Ukraine was a “sincere indigenous revolt against a corrupt government,” the delusional should watch this video of the neo-nazi intimidating the US stooge who is a member of what Washington pretends is the government of Ukraine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BV5Wm3qXfy4
God help the American people. Their ignorance and gullibility make them an enormous threat to life on earth.
Yes, I know. I have readers who have escaped The Matrix. But the majority of the American population is lost.
War will be the result of the ignorance, gullibility, and stupidity of the American population, its prostitute media, and the hegemonic ambitions of the evil neoconservatives. The corrupt rulers of Europe will sell out their peoples for American money until they are all vaporized in nuclear explosions.
The total corruption of truth, integrity, and morality that Washington has imposed on the Western world has aligned the West with the powers of Darkness and death. No greater evil exists than the government of the United States.
Link:
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/03/03/end-nearer-think-paul-craig-roberts/
Russia Reminds Us of Us
by Jacob G. Hornberger
U.S. officials and the mainstream press are aflame with outrage and indignation over Russia’s invasion of Crimea. If only they would feel the same degree of outrage and indignation over what the U.S. national security state, which was grafted onto our governmental system without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment, has done to our American republic.
Isn’t it fascinating how U.S. officials and the mainstream media are able to quickly arrive at a moral judgment condemning foreign interventionism on the part of Russia while, at the same time, blocking out of their minds all the foreign interventionism on the part of the U.S. government for the past many decades?
Have they really forgotten U.S. aggression against Honduras, Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua, Cuba, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam? Or do they simply consider those acts of aggression to be good and honorable because they were done in the name of the Cold War and with the fervor of anti-communism?
It’s rather amusing to see U.S. interventionists mocking Russia’s claim that it invaded Crimea to protect Russian citizens. After all, wasn’t that Ronald Reagan’s justification for invading Grenada — that he was protecting American citizens when he ordered U.S. military forces to invade that independent nation?
Or how about the U.S. invasion of Panama? Didn’t U.S. national-security state officials justify that invasion, which killed many innocent people, with their much-vaunted “war on drugs”?
Or about the invasion and war of aggression against Iraq? By the way, where are those infamous WMDs? Or was it out of concern for democracy and for the well-being of the Iraqi people that U.S. forces ended up killing, maiming, incarcerating, torturing, and exiling millions of Iraqis, not one single one of whom had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks?
There is longstanding principle in the law called standing. The principle precludes a party from making certain legal claims. For example, if a party comes into court with what the law calls “unclean hands,” it is held to lack standing to seek equitable relief.
The principle of standing should also apply to international affairs. If anybody lacks standing to complain of Russian interventionism, it’s the U.S. government. Considering the U.S. government’s longstanding policy of foreign interventionism, including invasions, occupations, assassinations, foreign aid to dictatorships, and regime-change operations, it clearly comes into the international arena with unclean hands.
Compare Switzerland. It does have standing to complain about the Russian aggression because the Swiss government, unlike the U.S. government and the Russian government, doesn’t engage in foreign interventionism and foreign aggression. The Swiss government limits itself to the defense of Switzerland. It butts out of the affairs of other nations. It minds its own business.
But because it minds its own business, it’s unlikely that the Swiss government, unlike the U.S. government, is going to go into crisis mode and embroil itself with acts to “punish” Russia.
The Swiss government’s policy of noninterventionism exemplifies the founding foreign policy principles of the United States. As John Quincy Adams intimated in his Fourth of July address to Congress in 1821, lots of bad things happen around the world. There is aggression, there are famines, there are wars, there are tyrants, there are revolutions, and there is suffering.
As Adams pointed out, however, the foreign policy of the United States would be to stay out of all those foreign messes. Instead, the American people would devote their efforts to building a free and prosperous society here at home to serve both as a model and a sanctuary for the people of the world.
Unfortunately, however, in the early 20th century those with a mindset of statism and interventionism took America in a different direction — in the direction of empire and foreign interventionism. Then, with the adoption of the national security state after World War II, Americans were induced, in the name of opposing communism, to embrace Soviet-like policies and programs, including such un-American things as invasions, occupations, torture, drug experimentations on unsuspecting people, hiring of Nazi officials, rendition, partnerships with brutal foreign dictatorships, regime-change operations, ouster of democratically elected regimes and their replacement with brutal dictatorships, and the like.
Consider, for example, the U.S. national-security state’s decision to topple three democratically elected or appointed heads of state and replace them with brutal U.S.-controlled dictators — in Iran, Guatemala, and Chile. Many innocent people lost their lives in those brutal interventions, including two young American journalists in Chile, Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, who were murdered through the joint cooperation of Chilean and U.S. national-security state officials. Those regime-change operations were actions that were consistent with Soviet methods, not the founding principles of America.
Now would be a good time for Americans to engage in serious self-examination. Now would be a good time to dismantle our own military empire and end our foreign policy of interventionism. Now would be a good time to stop doing the types of things that are inherent to autocratic and totalitarian regimes. Now would be a good time to stop searching for crises that serve as an excuse to expand the power of the military, the CIA, and the NSA. Now would be a good time to return to our nation’s founding principles.
Link:
http://fff.org/2014/03/03/russia-reminds-us-of-us/
London Mayor Calls For State to Take Children Based on Parents’ Political Beliefs
UKIP members already being targeted by social services
Paul Joseph Watson
Parents with radical political beliefs should have their children taken by the state, according to London Mayor Boris Johnson, a chilling prospect given that parents who support major political parties like UKIP are already being targeted by social services.
Writing in his weekly column, Johnson said that, “The law should obviously treat radicalisation as a form of child abuse.”
While the idea is being promoted under the ostensibly reasonable justification that it will stop children being turned into “potential killers or suicide bombers,” Johnson said it could also be applied under more vague circumstances, such as if the child is taught to be “full of hate.”
The Mayor said that children whose parents are supporters of the British National Party, a right-wing organization that vehemently opposes immigration, may be taken into care in “extreme” circumstances.
However, children are already being seized from their parents under much less extreme circumstances.
In 2012, a couple had their foster children removed from their care by a local government council because they were members of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), which is the third largest political party in the United Kingdom and is expected to win the upcoming European Parliamentary elections.
Social workers told the parents, who had an exemplary record for fostering children, that the kids had been taken due to them belonging to a “racist party”. UKIP was deemed to be “racist” by the council because it opposes the “active promotion of multiculturalism.”
If the same standard is applied across the pond, many conservatives and libertarians face having their children seized since the Department of Homeland Security now characterizes “liberty lovers” as extremists and puts them in the same bracket as violent terrorists.
Johnson’s editorial arrives just weeks after a law was passed in Scotland that designates a state minder to every child in the country up to the age of 18, a move described by the Christian Institute as a, “dreadful extension of the state’s tentacles into family life.”
The law basically treats every parent as a potential child abuser and tasks government snoops with the responsibility of keeping tabs on kids in a program that sounds like it was ripped straight from the pages of a dystopian novel like Brave New World.
Abertay University’s Dr Stuart Waiton said that state guardians would be “less likely to focus on the very few serious cases of child abuse” as these will become “lost in the crowd” of an expanded list of concerns.
Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/london-mayor-calls-for-state-to-take-children-based-on-parents-political-beliefs.html
The U.S. has Installed a Neo-Nazi Government in Ukraine
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky
According to the New York Times, “The United States and the European Union have embraced the revolution here as another flowering of democracy, a blow to authoritarianism and kleptocracy in the former Soviet space.” ( After Initial Triumph, Ukraine’s Leaders Face Battle for Credibility, NYTimes.com, March 1, 2014, emphasis added)
“Flowering Democracy, Revolution”? The grim realities are otherwise. What is a stake is a US-EU-NATO sponsored coup d’Etat in blatant violation of international law.
The forbidden truth is that the West has engineered –through a carefully staged covert operation– the formation of a proxy regime integrated by Neo-Nazis.
Confirmed by Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, key organizations in the Ukraine including the Neo-Nazi party Svoboda were generously supported by Washington: “We have invested more than 5 billion dollars to help Ukraine to achieve these and other goals. … We will continue to promote Ukraine to the future it deserves.”
The Western media has casually avoided to analyze the composition and ideological underpinnings of the government coalition. The word “Neo-Nazi” is a taboo. It has been excluded from the dictionary of mainstream media commentary. It will not appear in the pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post or The Independent. Journalists have been instructed not to use the term “Neo-Nazi” to designate Svoboda and the Right Sector.
Composition of the Coalition Government
We are not dealing with a transitional government in which Neo-Nazi elements integrate the fringe of the coalition, formally led by the Fatherland party.
The Cabinet is not only integrated by the Svoboda and Right Sector (not to mention former members of defunct fascist UNA-UNSO), the two main Neo-Nazi entities have been entrusted with key positions which grant them de facto control over the Armed Forces, Police, Justice and National Security.
While Yatsenuyk’s Fatherland Party controls the majority of portfolios and Svoboda Neo-Nazi leader Oleh Tyahnybok was not granted a major cabinet post (apparently at the request of assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland), members of Svoboda and the Right Sector occupy key positions in the areas of Defense, Law Enforcement, Education and Economic Affairs...
Read the rest:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-u-s-has-installed-a-neo-nazi-government-in-ukraine/5371554
Uninsured Americans suddenly realize they were conned by Obamacare
by: J. D. Heyes
The Affordable Care Act - Obamacare - has always had its opponents, but as more Americans become familiar with the law and begin to experience its ill effects, the more it is hated.
And now, in perhaps one of the most compelling ironies, the very people whom the law was supposed to benefit the most - the uninsured - are beginning to turn against Obamacare in droves.
According to a recently released study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which has been studying and analyzing the various provisions of Obamacare for years, uninsured Americans reject the law by a stunning margin:
Uninsured Americans - the people that the Affordable Care Act was designed to most aid - are increasingly critical of the law as its key provisions kick in, a poll released Thursday finds.
This month's tracking poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 47 percent of the uninsured said they hold unfavorable views of the law while 24 percent said they liked it. These negative views have increased since December, when 43 percent of the uninsured panned the law and 36 percent liked it.
In short, America's uninsured are rejecting Obamacare by a margin of 2:1.
As more Americans experience Obamacare, more will hate it
Kaiser reported that its media-wing survey did not zero in on the exact reasons for the drop in popularity, "which comes in the first month that people could start using insurance purchased through the online marketplaces that are at the heart of the law."
However, the survey did note that more than half of the people who did not otherwise have health insurance prior to Obamacare said the law so far has not made a difference to them or their families. Also, pollsters indicated that nearly half of those without coverage were not aware that the law includes taxpayer subsidies to offset premium costs for those with low-to-moderate incomes (these subsidies are going to wind up costing more than originally thought as well, but that's another story).
Overall, sentiment among Americans was very negative; half of those surveyed hold a dim view of the law, while just 34 percent said they supported it. Oddly though, only 38 percent said they wanted the law repealed.
That could be due to this next piece of data: Most Americans surveyed said they have so far not been personally affected by Obamacare, but those who have report more negative than positive; 27 percent said their experience has been negative compared to just 15 percent who say it has been positive. Those with negative views - unsurprisingly - said they stem mostly from having to pay higher premiums and from the generally high cost of care.
More from Kaiser:
The pollsters surmised these views did not reflect actual experiences with the new marketplaces that began operation on Jan. 1, because only a small portion of those eligible has enrolled in them so far. The poll also noted that twice as many people said they had seen news stories about people being harmed by the law as had seen stories about people being helped.
Perhaps that's because the harm has far outweighed the good?
See what Obamacare is doing to real people every day
Now, it's possible that polling figures regarding the law will improve as more Americans experience it. But it's also possible that, due to trends we are already seeing - higher premiums, much higher deductibles, loss of physicians in certain networks, less access to clinics and longer waits to see your doctor - these figures will worsen as well.
As John Sexton over at Breitbart News writes:
Two points about this. First, as noted above, Kaiser has been polling on the law's popularity since 2010. Obviously none of the people polled back when the law was more popular had any experience with the law either. The poll itself was always a popularity contest based on public perception. If anything the current response is at least based on some real elements of the law which have been in the news (the failed website, rate shock, etc.) rather than the sometimes empty political promises about what the law will be.
Second, while it's possible that one day Americans will warm to the law that day may not be right around the corner.
Finally, there is this: If you want to see real-life reactions when ordinary Americans are told how much their plans will change (the cost especially), then just watch this video: YouTube.com.
Real Americans, with real families, are getting hit with real increases that they simply don't know how they're going to be able to afford.
Thank President Obama and Democrats, all of whom won't have a problem affording their coverage (because they make far-above-average salaries and because their coverage is subsidized 75 percent by taxpayers).
Learn more:
http://www.naturalnews.com/044145_uninsured_Americans_Obamacare_complete_fraud.html#ixzz2uu4v52VJ
How Government Confiscates Your Wealth
by Bob Livingston
Ukraine: One ‘Regime Change’ Too Many?
By Ray McGovern
Is “regime change” in Ukraine the bridge too far for the neoconservative “regime changers” of Official Washington and their sophomoric “responsibility-to-protect” (R2P) allies in the Obama administration? Have they dangerously over-reached by pushing the putsch that removed duly-elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych?
Russian President Vladimir Putin has given an unmistakable “yes” to those questions – in deeds, not words. His message is clear: “Back off our near-frontier!”
Moscow announced on Saturday that Russia’s parliament has approved Putin’s request for permission to use Russia’s armed forces “on the territory of the Ukraine pending the normalization of the socio-political situation in that country.”
Putin described this move as necessary to protect ethnic Russians and military personnel stationed in Crimea in southern Ukraine, where the Russian Black Sea Fleet and other key military installations are located. But there is no indication that the Russian parliament has restricted the use of Russian armed forces to the Crimea.
Unless Obama is completely bereft of advisers who know something about Russia, it should have been a “known-known” (pardon the Rumsfeldian mal mot) that the Russians would react this way to a putsch removing Yanukovich. It would have been a no-brainer that Russia would use military force, if necessary, to counter attempts to use economic enticement and subversive incitement to slide Ukraine into the orbit of the West and eventually NATO.
This was all the more predictable in the case of Ukraine, where Putin – although the bête noirein corporate Western media – holds very high strategic cards geographically, militarily, economically and politically.
Unlike ‘Prague Spring’ 1968
Moscow’s advantage was not nearly as clear during the short-lived “Prague Spring” of 1968 when knee-jerk, non-thinking euphoria reigned in Washington and West European capitals. Thecognoscenti were, by and large, smugly convinced that reformer Alexander Dubcek could break Czechoslovakia away from the U.S.S.R.’s embrace and still keep the Russian bear at bay.
My CIA analyst portfolio at the time included Soviet policy toward Eastern Europe, and I was amazed to see analysts of Eastern Europe caught up in the euphoria that typically ended with, “And the Soviets can’t do a damned thing about it!”
That summer a new posting found me advising Radio Free Europe Director Ralph Walter who, virtually alone among his similarly euphoric colleagues, shared my view that Russian tanks would inevitably roll onto Prague’s Wenceslaus Square, which they did in late August.
Past is not always prologue. But it is easy for me to imagine the Russian Army cartographic agency busily preparing maps of the best routes for tanks into Independence Square in Kiev, and that before too many months have gone by, Russian tank commanders may be given orders to invade, if those stoking the fires of violent dissent in the western parts of Ukraine keep pushing too far.
That said, Putin has many other cards to play and time to play them. These include sitting back and doing nothing, cutting off Russia’s subsidies to Ukraine, making it ever more difficult for Yanukovich’s successors to cope with the harsh realities. And Moscow has ways to remind the rest of Europe of its dependence on Russian oil and gas.
Another Interference
There is one huge difference between Prague in 1968 and Kiev 2014. The “Prague Spring” revolution led by Dubcek enjoyed such widespread spontaneous popular support that it was difficult for Russian leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Aleksey Kosygin to argue plausibly that it was spurred by subversion from the West.
Not so 45-plus years later. In early February, as violent protests raged in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev and the White House professed neutrality, U.S. State Department officials were, in the words of NYU professor emeritus of Russian studies Stephen Cohen, “plotting a coup d’état against the elected president of Ukraine.”
We know that thanks to neocon prima donna Victoria Nuland, now Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, who seemed intent on giving new dimension to the “cookie-pushing” role of U.S. diplomats. Recall the photo showing Nuland in a metaphor of over-reach, as she reached deep into a large plastic bag to give each anti-government demonstrator on the square a cookie before the putsch.
More important, recall her amateurish, boorish use of an open telephone to plot regime change in Ukraine with a fellow neocon, U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt. Crass U.S. interference in Ukrainian affairs can be seen (actually, better, heard) in an intercepted conversation posted on YouTube on Feb. 4.
Yikes! It’s Yats!
Nuland was recorded as saying: “Yats is the guy. He’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. He’s the guy you know. … Yats will need all the help he can get to stave off collapse in the ex-Soviet state. He has warned there is an urgent need for unpopular cutting of subsidies and social payments before Ukraine can improve.”
And guess what. The stopgap government formed after the coup designated Nuland’s guy Yats, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, prime minister! What luck! Yats is 39 and has served as head of the central bank, foreign minister and economic minister. And, as designated pinch-hitter-prime-minister, he has already talked about the overriding need for “responsible government,” one willing to commit “political suicide,” as he put it, by taking unpopular social measures.
U.S. meddling has been so obvious that at President Barack Obama’s hastily scheduled Friday press conference on Ukraine, Yats’s name seemed to get stuck in Obama’s throat. Toward the end of his scripted remarks, which he read verbatim, the President said: “Vice President Biden just spoke with Prime Minister [pause] – the prime minister of Ukraine to assure him that in this difficult moment the United States supports his government’s efforts and stands for the sovereignty, territorial integrity and democratic future of Ukraine.”
Obama doesn’t usually stumble like that – especially when reading a text, and is normally quite good at pronouncing foreign names. Perhaps he worried that one of the White House stenographic corps might shout out, “You mean our man, Yats?” Obama departed right after reading his prepared remarks, leaving no opportunity for such an outburst.
Western media was abuzz with the big question: Will the Russians apply military force? The answer came quickly, though President Obama chose the subjunctive mood in addressing the question on Friday...
Read the rest here:
http://consortiumnews.com/2014/03/01/ukraine-one-regime-change-too-many/
States Act Like States, Aggressing, and Statesmen Lie Routinely
By Michael S. Rozeff
States aggress when their leaders feel like it, or “judge” such aggression to be in their “interests”. They aggress against their own citizens. They aggress against foreigners. Not everywhere, not always, not all the time, but when it suits them.
The U.S. aggressed in Iraq, massively. It’s aggressing right now in many places worldwide and domestically. This is what states do.
Is Russia aggressing against Ukraine? I do not know. Russia has leased a naval base in Sevastopol until 2042. My comments above are not prompted by Russia’s actions. They are prompted by this statement made by John Kerry : “You just don’t invade another country on phony pretexts in order to assert your interests.” The context is Russia and Ukraine, but what specifically is most noteworthy to me is that Kerry is condemning his own state, the U.S. It has top priority for me because the Bush adminstration, acting for the U.S., invaded Iraq on phony pretexts to assert its interests, and it did the same in Afghanistan. Then Obama repeated this in Libya and several other countries. Kerry, speaking for Obama and the U.S., has no moral or legal credibility in condemning Russia for what many states do routinely, domestically and in foreign affairs, and for what the U.S. has done and is doing. It doesn’t matter how many other governments he can rally against Russia or how many U.N. resolutions he can get on false premises or how many statements he can elicit from world “leaders” or organizations like NATO as he threatens trade sanctions, travel freezes and asset seizures. He is threatening further aggressions. Does anyone believe that these threats are for the moral reason that Kerry has presented, that “you just don’t invade another country”? That’s impossible, given that this is the usual behavior of states and the U.S. It’s impossible since the U.S. lets pass all sorts of other aggressions, such as that of Israel against Palestinians and Saudi Arabia against Syria. It has to be the case that Kerry’s and Obama’s agenda is something entirely different. The dangerous game they are playing is called “beat up on Russia”. Keep Russia down. Push against Russia. Confine Russia. Contain Russia. Prevent Russia from reconstructing an empire along the lines of the U.S. empire, that is, one based on invisible strings, pacts, alliances, aid packages, arms shipments, and so on. Keep Russian ships bottled up if at all possible. And by all means undermine Russia’s source of revenues via its oil and gas sales.
The rhetoric of Kerry and Obama is the furthest thing from believable in this foreign affair, and if it is not believable in this matter, why should we also not strongly suspect that their rhetoric for their domestic aggressions is likewise false and far from conveying the real purposes of their laws and activities? Statesmen lie routinely because they aggress routinely and they then attempt to cover up the actual nature of their aggressions.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/03/michael-s-rozeff/states-routinely-aggress/
Ignore the Lying US Media
By Jack D. Douglas
As you have probably noted, the Ukrainian situation is developing very fast.
The U.S. news reporting is totally biased. There is no real government at the national level in Kiev now, only a bunch of coup leaders. The Constitution is in abeyance since they overthrew the elected government by force.
The local areas are going their own way. Ukrainian troops seem to be going with the local people and governments.
The coup leaders are trying to whip up Western blood lust and war rage against Russia. If they are not insane, and they do not appear to be so, they know the whole Ukrainian military is not remotely able to stop Russia IF they really move in force against the coup leaders or local Ukrainian units in Eastern Ukraine.
Putin in fact is being very careful NOT to declare war or anything more than helping to save Russians from possible attacks. He is apparently quietly encouraging pro-Russian revolts against the anti-Russian revolts. IF this leads to open violence in predominantly Russian areas like Donetsk, I suspect Putin will send in low-key help as in the Crimea.
Putin is actually being very careful. The U.S. routinely sends in airborne Special Ops around the world to protect Americans in any such revolution, annihilates and invades whole nations like Afghanistan and Iraq on pretenses, etc.
I suspect Putin does not want to get involved in the Western Ukraine to avoid any serious guerrilla wars like they met in Afghanistan when they flew in unopposed on the invitation of the government but over the years got defeated by guerrillas.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/03/jack-d-douglas/ignore-the-us-media/
Have We Allowed the First Amendment to Become an Exercise in Futility?
By John W. Whitehead
“The First Amendment was intended to secure something more than an exercise in futility.”—Justice John Paul Stevens, dissenting in Minnesota Board for Community Colleges v. Knight (1984)[1]
Living in a representative republic means that each person has the right to take a stand for what they think is right, whether that means marching outside the halls of government, wearing clothing with provocative statements, or simply holding up a sign. That’s what the First Amendment is supposed to be about.
Unfortunately, as I show in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, through a series of carefully crafted legislative steps and politically expedient court rulings, government officials have managed to disembowel this fundamental freedom, rendering it with little more meaning than the right to file a lawsuit against government officials. In fact, if the court rulings handed down in the last week of February 2014 are anything to go by, the First Amendment has, for all intents and purposes, become an exercise in futility.
On February 26, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 9-0 ruling, held that anti-nuclear activist John Denis Apel could be prosecuted for staging a protest on a public road at an Air Force base, free speech claims notwithstanding, because the public road is technically government property.[2]
Insisting that it’s not safe to display an American flag in an American public school, on February 27, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that school officials were justified when they ordered three students at a California public high school to cover up their patriotic apparel emblazoned with American flags or be sent home on the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo, allegedly out of a concern that it might offend Hispanic students.[3]
On February 28, a federal court dismissed Marine veteran Brandon Raub’s case. Despite the fact that Raub was interrogated by Secret Service agents, handcuffed, arrested, subjected to a kangaroo court, and locked up in a mental facility for posting song lyrics and statements on Facebook critical of the government—a clear violation of his free speech rights—the court ruled that Raub’s concerns about the government were far-fetched and merited such treatment.
There you have it: three rulings in three days, from three different levels of the American judicial system, and all of them aimed at suppressing free speech. Yet what most people fail to understand is that these cases are not merely about the citizenry’s right to freely express themselves. Rather, these cases speak to the citizenry’s right to express their concerns about their government to their government, in a time, place and manner best suited to ensuring that those concerns are heard.
The First Amendment gives every American the right to “petition his government for a redress of grievances.” This amounts to so much more than filing a lawsuit against the government. It works hand in hand with free speech to ensure, as Adam Newton and Ronald K.L. Collins report for the Five Freedoms Project, “that our leaders hear, even if they don’t listen to, the electorate. Though public officials may be indifferent, contrary, or silent participants in democratic discourse, at least the First Amendment commands their audience.”[4]
The challenge we face today, however, is that government officials have succeeded in insulating themselves from their constituents, making it increasingly difficult for average Americans to make themselves seen or heard by those who most need to hear what “we the people” have to say. Indeed, while lobbyists mill in and out of the White House and the homes and offices of Congressmen, the American people are kept at a distance through free speech zones, electronic town hall meetings, and security barriers. And those who dare to breach the gap—even through silent forms of protest—are arrested for making their voices heard.
This right to speak freely, assemble, protest and petition one’s government officials for a redress of grievances is front and center right now, with the U.S. Supreme Court set to decide five free speech cases this term, the first of which, U.S. v. Apel, was just handed down. The case was based upon claims brought by John Denis Apel, an anti-war activist who holds monthly protests Vandenburg Air Force Base near Lompoc, California. While the Court did not uphold his conviction for trespassing on military property, they doubled down on the notion that the public is subject to the whims of military commanders in matters relating to use military property, even when it intersects with public property. The Court refused to rule on Apel’s First Amendment claims.[5]
The Supreme Court is also set to decide McCullen v. Coakley, which will determine whether or not a Massachusetts law which restricts protests on public sidewalks near the entrances, exits, and driveways of abortion clinics in the state is constitutional. The facts of the case indicate that the law does not abide by a reasonable time, place, and manner restriction, and places an undue burden on protestors. However, it’s unclear which way the Court will rule, especially with their refusal to clarify matters in Apel.
Free speech can certainly not be considered “free” when expressive activities across the nation are being increasingly limited, restricted to so-called free speech zones, or altogether blocked, including in front of the Supreme Court’s own plaza. If citizens cannot stand out in the open on a public road and voice their disapproval of their government, its representatives and its policies, without fearing prosecution, then the First Amendment with all its robust protections for free speech, assembly and the right to petition one’s government for a redress of grievances is little more than window-dressing on a store window—pretty to look at but serving little real purpose.
The case of Harold Hodge is a particularly telling illustration of the way in which the political elite in America have sheltered themselves from all correspondence and criticism.
On a snowy morning in January 2011, Harold Hodge quietly and peacefully stood in the plaza area near the steps leading to the United States Supreme Court Building, wearing a 3’ X 2’ sign around his neck that proclaimed: “The U.S. Gov. Allows Police To Illegally Murder And Brutalize African Americans And Hispanic People.” There weren’t many passersby, and he wasn’t blocking anyone’s way. However, after a few minutes, a police officer informed Hodge that he was violating a federal law that makes it unlawful to display any flag, banner or device designed to bring into public notice a party, organization, or movement while on the grounds of the U.S. Supreme Court and issued him three warnings to leave the plaza. Hodge refused, was handcuffed, placed under arrest, moved to a holding cell, and then was transported to U.S. Capitol Police Headquarters where he was booked and given a citation.
According to the federal law Hodge is accused of violating, “It is unlawful to parade, stand, or move in processions or assemblages in the Supreme Court Building or grounds, or to display in the Building and grounds a flag, banner, or device designed or adapted to bring into public notice a party, organization, or movement.”[6] The penalty for violating this law is a fine of up to $5,000 and/or up to 60 days in jail.
With the help of The Rutherford Institute, in January 2012, Hodge challenged the constitutionality of the statute barring silent expressive activity in front of the Supreme Court. A year later, in a strongly worded, District Court Judge Beryl L. Howell struck down the federal law, declaring that the “the absolute prohibition on expressive activity [on the Supreme Court plaza] in the statute is unreasonable, substantially overbroad, and irreconcilable with the First Amendment.”
Incredibly, one day later, the marshal for the Supreme Court—with the approval of Chief Justice John Roberts—issued even more strident regulations outlawing expressive activity on the grounds of the high court, including the plaza. Hodge’s case, along with a companion case challenging the new regulations on behalf of a broad coalition of protesters, is now making its way through the appeals process. Ironically, it will be the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court who will eventually be asked to decide the constitutionality of their own statute, yet they have already made their views on the subject quite clear.
This desire to insulate government officials from those exercising their First Amendment rights stems from an elitist mindset which views “we the people” as different, set apart somehow, from the citizens they have been appointed to serve and represent. It is nothing new. In fact, the law under which Harold Hodge was prosecuted was enacted by Congress in 1949. In the decades since, interactions with politicians have become increasingly manufactured and distant. Press conferences, ticketed luncheons[7], televised speeches and one-sided town hall meetings held over the phone[8] now largely take the place of face-to-face interaction with constituents.[9]
Additionally, there has been an increased use of so-called “free speech zones,” designated areas for expressive activity used to corral and block protestors at political events from interacting with public officials. Both the Democratic and Republican parties have used these “free speech zones,” some located within chain-link cages[10], at various conventions to mute any and all criticism of their policies.
Clearly, the government has no interest in hearing what “we the people” have to say. Yet if Americans are not able to peacefully assemble for expressive activity outside of the halls of government or on public roads on which government officials must pass, the First Amendment has lost all meaning. If we cannot stand silently outside of the Supreme Court or the Capitol or the White House, our ability to hold the government accountable for its actions is threatened, and so are the rights and liberties that we cherish as Americans. And if we cannot proclaim our feelings about the government, no matter how controversial, on our clothing, or to passersby, or to the users of the world wide web, then the First Amendment really has become an exercise in futility.
George Orwell, always relevant to our present age, warned against this intolerance for free speech in 1945. As he noted:
The point is that the relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion. The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them… The notion that certain opinions cannot safely be allowed a hearing is growing. It is given currency by intellectuals who confuse the issue by not distinguishing between democratic opposition and open rebellion, and it is reflected in our growing indifference to tyranny and injustice abroad. And even those who declare themselves to be in favour of freedom of opinion generally drop their claim when it is their own adversaries who are being prosecuted.[11]
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/03/john-w-whitehead/free-speech-rip/
Memo to Obama: This Was Their Red Line!
By David Stockman
In 1783 the Crimea was annexed by Catherine the Great, thereby satisfying the longstanding quest of the Russian Czars for a warm-water port. In fact, over the ages Sevastopol emerged as a great naval base at the strategic tip of the Crimean peninsula, where it became home to the mighty Black Sea Fleet of the Czars and then the commissars.
For the next 171 years Crimea was an integral part of Russia—a span that exceeds the 166 years that have elapsed since California was annexed by a similar thrust of “Manifest Destiny” on this continent, thereby providing, incidentally, the United States Navy with its own warm-water port in San Diego. While no foreign forces subsequently invaded the California coasts, it was most definitely not Ukrainian and Polish riffles, artillery and blood which famously annihilated The Charge Of The Light Brigade at the Crimean city of Balaclava in 1854; they were Russians defending the homeland.
And the portrait of the Russian ”hero” hanging in Putin’s office is that of Czar Nicholas I—who’s brutal 30-year reign brought the Russian Empire to its historical zenith, and who was revered in Russian hagiography as the defender of Crimea, even as he lost the 1850s war to the Ottomans and Europeans. Besides that, there is no evidence that Putin does historical apologies, anyway.
In fact, its their Red Line. When the enfeebled Franklin Roosevelt made port in the Crimean city of Yalta in February 1945 he did know he was in Soviet Russia. Maneuvering to cement his control of the Kremlin in the intrigue-ridden struggle for succession after Stalin’s death a few years later, Nikita Khrushchev allegedly spent 15 minutes reviewing his “gift” of Crimea to his subalterns in Kiev in honor of the decision by their ancestors 300 years earlier to accept the inevitable and become a vassal of Russia.
Self-evidently, during the long decades of the Cold War, the West did nothing to liberate the “captive nation” of the Ukraine—with or without the Crimean appendage bestowed upon it in 1954. Nor did it draw any red lines in the mid-1990′s when a financially desperate Ukraine rented back Sevastopol and the strategic redoubts of the Crimea to an equally pauperized Russia.
In short, in the era before we got our Pacific port in 1848 and in the 166-year interval since then, the security and safety of the American people have depended not one wit on the status of the Russian-speaking Crimea. Should the local population now choose fealty to the Grand Thief in Moscow over the ruffians and rabble who have seized Kiev, what’s to matter! Worse still, how long can America survive the screeching sanctimony and mindless meddling of Susan Rice and Samantha Power? Mr. President, send them back to geography class; don’t draw any new Red Lines. This one has been morphing for centuries among the quarreling tribes, peoples, potentates, Patriarchs and pretenders of a small region that is none of our damn business.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/03/david-stockman/none-of-your-damn-business-obama/
Obamacare causing Target to drop coverage for part-time employees
by: J. D. Heyes
We have warned for more than a year that the Affordable Care Act will prove to be one of the most harmful, job-killing, economy-destroying pieces of legislation ever, and with each passing week we are consistently proven correct.
One of the boldest - and easiest - predictions we made regarding the ill effects of Obamacare was that the law's employer mandate would cause a net reduction in employment. The employer mandate, you may recall, is a provision in the law that requires all employers with more than 50 full-time employees to provide them with health insurance coverage.
Well, that provision alone, we knew, would cost employers lots of money - costs that would either a) be passed onto customers in the form of higher prices (which is happening); or b) be reduced by reducing the number of full-time employees (which has also been happening, hence the "part-time economy" reference that some fiscal experts have begun to utilize to describe today's economic conditions).
That said, sometimes it is no fun being right.
If you like your coverage, we're sorry, but you can't keep it
The latest Obamacare employment casualties are part-time workers at big-box retailer Target. According to a recent report in The Hill, the company has decided that, in order to cut costs, it will be dropping health coverage for its part-time employees - despite President Obama's unconstitutional one-year delay of the employer mandate:
In a blog post on the company's website, Jodee Kozlak, the executive vice president of human resources, framed it as a positive development for part-time employees of the company.
"The Health Insurance Marketplaces provides new options for healthcare coverage that we believe our part-time members may prefer," she wrote. "In fact, by offering them insurance, we could actually disqualify many of them from being eligible for newly available subsidies that could reduce their overall health insurance expense."
Uh, well - perhaps not. But all of this was foreseeable as well. As to Obamacare creating part-time jobs:
-- In July I wrote that Obamacare would force companies to reduce full-time employee hours to part-time, in order to avoid having to pay (much more) for their insurance [http://www.naturalnews.com]:
At a time when unemployment remains unacceptably high (7.6 percent in June, up from lows of 4-5 percent in 2004-2006), Obamacare is putting even more downward pressure on hiring, leaving American workers stuck in cycles of unemployment or underemployment.
-- In a separate July report, I noted that, "according to a just-published survey, a staggering 74 percent of small businesses - nearly three-quarters - say they will have to cut hours and jobs in order to stay afloat, thanks to the employer mandate in Obamacare."
[http://www.naturalnews.com]
Other health industry analysts also predicted that the employee mandate would typically destroy the current employee-insurance concept, because in order to save money, companies dump their workers onto the Obamacare exchanges, just like Target is doing.
As reported by The Daily Caller in September of last year:
Home Depot is transferring roughly 20,000 part-time workers to the taxpayer-funded Obamacare exchanges, marking another step in the nationwide rollout of President Barack Obama's most prized accomplishment.
"Unfortunately, the ACA [Affordable Care Act] precludes us from offering the limited liability medical plan we've been offering the part-time associates," said Stephen Holmes, the company's director of corporate communications.
The coming disaster for taxpayers
So far, only a limited number of companies have made the move to dump their employees onto Obamacare exchanges, but as the deadline for the employer mandate period draws near later this year, more companies are bound to follow suit.
And that will be a disaster for taxpayers.
The authors of the law based part of its success on the fact that costs could be kept lower by forcing employers to shoulder the burden for covering employees. But what the authors didn't anticipate was that the costs to provide said coverage are simply too much to bear for many companies, necessitating their need to dump as many employees as possible into the exchanges.
And doing so will force a dramatic increase in the cost to the government (read: taxpayers) to cover additional millions whose coverage costs were supposed to be borne by employers.
The Obamacare disaster continues to unfold by the week. There is no way things get better before they get much, much worse.
Learn more:
http://www.naturalnews.com/044117_Obamacare_part-time_employees_Target.html#ixzz2upVzBuBB
ADHD: A false paradigm projected onto the minds of a generation
by: Lance Johnson
In today's healthcare climate, where prescription drug use has multiplied, it's becoming increasingly important to question medical professionals on the diagnoses they dish out. It's equally important to question one's own belief in pharmacology as the solution to the health problems we face today. We must question the labels that we place on ourselves and on our kids.
One in nine children now labeled with ADHD
A very misleading paradigm has been imposed on the minds of the public and has been facilitated through the Western medical institution in the past three decades. This misleading mindset is leading many children to be labeled with ADHD, which stands for "attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder." This fabricated "disorder" has morphed into a pill-popping craze in the 21st century, and it is addicting more and more children to dangerous stimulant drugs. ADHD, first coined by the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in 1980 as "attention-deficit disorder," has since then skyrocketed. In 2003, 7.8 percent of children were labeled with ADHD, and by 2011, that number spiked to 11 percent.
This false paradigm is now being planted in the minds of one in every nine children. Two-thirds of the diagnoses are in boys. This is an alarming trend of misdiagnosis, especially when drugs like Adderall and Ritalin are prescribed. The more a child takes these drugs, the more they will develop a tolerance to them, which can lead to a dangerous addiction spiral.
New book written by neurologist Richard Saul sheds light on the situation
The new book, titled ADHD Does Not Exist: The Truth About Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder, is the culmination of Dr. Saul's half-century of experience treating patients.
In his own words, "Not a single individual -- not even the person who finds it close to impossible to pay attention or sit still -- is afflicted by the disorder called ADHD as we define it today."
Saul witnessed how countless patients would come to him with the ADHD label already scribed into their minds. Saul recognized underlying problems that can be solved without the ADHD label and subsequent drugging of the patient.
Patients showing short attention spans would come right up to Saul claiming that they had ADHD. He says that patients would come straight to his doctor office already mentally self-diagnosed with ADHD, asking for drugs like Adderall and Ritalin.
"ADHD makes a great excuse," Saul says. "The diagnosis can be an easy-to-reach-for crutch. Moreover, there's an attractive element to an ADHD diagnosis, especially in adults -- it can be exciting to think of oneself as involved in many things at once, rather than stuck in a boring rut."
Saul relays that his medical colleagues were quick to prescribe the stimulant drugs Ritalin and Adderall, because patients met criteria from a "two-minute checklist."
Saul's method involves treating patients' individual situations and symptoms without drugs
But Dr. Saul believes that the fictitious ADHD is really a collection of symptoms, not a disease. He believes that ADHD should be taken out of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. He believes that the symptoms should be approached holistically. Instead of looking at hyperactivity, fidgeting and lack of focus as one lump "disease," Saul outlines causes, methods and alternative solutions for people who struggle to focus and pay attention.
In one example, Saul told the New York Post about a girl who was being treated for ADHD because she was disruptive in class because she couldn't see the blackboard. In the end, all she needed was glasses, not drugs.
Learn more:
http://www.naturalnews.com/044134_ADHD_false_paradigm_children.html#ixzz2upUSYruF
Obama Gets Heckled About Potential Nuclear War With Russia
Source: Lee Rogers, Daily Slave/BLN
Watch this video of Obama getting heckled over a potential nuclear conflict with Russia. Obama jokes it off even though the heckler asked a very serious question. The United States government spent billions of dollars financing the recent coup in Ukraine. This ulterior agenda has created all sorts of chaos. It has allowed the rise of anti-Russian and ultra nationalist groups which are rapidly expanding their political influence in Kiev. These political forces now represent a direct security threat to Russia and has greatly increased the possibility of war breaking out.
All of this has been the result of Washington's insane decision to interfere in the internal affairs of Ukraine. What's even scarier is how the crowd reacted to Obama's response. Everybody thought it was funny. It just shows that Obama's base consists of clueless and willfully ignorant fools.
Link:
http://www.blacklistednews.com/Obama_Gets_Heckled_About_Potential_Nuclear_War_With_Russia/33290/0/38/38/Y/M.html
Prime Minister: Russia Has Declared War on Ukraine
“We are on the brink of disaster”
Paul Joseph Watson
Moscow’s move to occupy Crimea with Russian troops is a declaration of war on Ukraine according to interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk.
“This is actually a declaration of war on my country. We urge Putin to pull back his troops from this country and honour bilateral agreements. If he wants to be the president who started a war between two neighboring and friendly countries, he has reached his target within a few inches,” said Yatseniuk, warning, “We are on the brink of disaster.”
Although there has been no violence, Russian troops now occupy key positions throughout the Crimean peninsula, including airports and communication hubs.
Kiev’s post-overthrow government responded by ordering a full military mobilization of Ukrainian forces. BBC News reports that Russian troops are surrounding Ukrainian army bases in addition to, “digging trenches on the border with mainland Ukraine.”
Many Ukrainian armed forces in Crimea resigned their positions and are expected to take military oaths and switch sides, according to reports.
Although technically part of Ukraine, Crimea is an Autonomous Republic and authorities there have firmly sided with Russia over the conflict. Vladimir Konstantinov, Chairman of the republic’s Supreme Council, urged NATO not to send troops into the region.
“We have not asked NATO to send troops. This land belongs to the Russian world. We would like everyone to remember that. It’s a millennium-old history. The people of Russia and Ukraine belong to the Russian world,” said Konstantinov.
US Secretary of State John Kerry reacted by issuing a series of threats, warning that Russia could be kicked out of the G8, or that the U.S. could freeze Russian business assets and precipitate a collapse of the rouble.
President Barack Obama said that Russian troop movements represent a “violation of Ukrainian sovereignty”.
Meanwhile, it has been revealed that 675,000 Ukrainians left Ukraine for Russia in January and February over fears that a humanitarian catastrophe was unfolding.
Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/prime-minister-russia-has-declared-war-on-ukraine.html
US Government Created Terrorists to Fight the Soviets in Afghanistan
Washington’s Blog
Top American officials admit that the U.S. armed and supported Bin Laden and the other Mujahadin – which later morphed into Al Qaeda – in the 1970s, in order to fight the Soviets.
Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski admitted on CNN that the U.S. organized and supported Bin Laden and the other originators of “Al Qaeda” in the 1970s to fight the Soviets. Brzezinski told Al Qaeda’s forefathers – the Mujahadin:
We know of their deep belief in God – that they’re confident that their struggle will succeed. That land over – there is yours – and you’ll go back to it some day, because your fight will prevail, and you’ll have your homes, your mosques, back again, because your cause is right, and God is on your side.
CIA director and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates confirmed in his memoir that the U.S. backed the Mujahadin in the 1970s.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton agrees:
MSNBC reported in 1998:
As his unclassified CIA biography states, bin Laden left Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan after Moscow’s invasion in 1979. By 1984, he was running a front organization known as Maktab al-Khidamar – the MAK – which funneled money, arms and fighters from the outside world into the Afghan war.
What the CIA bio conveniently fails to specify (in its unclassified form, at least) is that the MAK was nurtured by Pakistan’s state security services, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the CIA’s primary conduit for conducting the covert war against Moscow’s occupation.
***
The CIA, concerned about the factionalism of Afghanistan … found that Arab zealots who flocked to aid the Afghans were easier to “read” than the rivalry-ridden natives. While the Arab volunteers might well prove troublesome later, the agency reasoned, they at least were one-dimensionally anti-Soviet for now. So bin Laden, along with a small group of Islamic militants from Egypt, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestinian refugee camps all over the Middle East, became the “reliable” partners of the CIA in its war against Moscow.
***
To this day, those involved in the decision to give the Afghan rebels access to a fortune in covert funding and top-level combat weaponry continue to defend that move in the context of the Cold War. Sen. Orrin Hatch, a senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee making those decisions, told my colleague Robert Windrem that he would make the same call again today even knowing what bin Laden would do subsequently. “It was worth it,” he said.
“Those were very important, pivotal matters that played an important role in the downfall of the Soviet Union,” he said.
Indeed, the U.S. started backing Al Qaeda’s forefathers even before the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. As Brzezinski told Le Nouvel Observateur in a 1998 interview:
Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
***
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
The Washington Post reported in 2002:
The United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings ….
The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books ….
The Council on Foreign Relations notes:
The 9/11 Commission report (PDF) released in 2004 said some of Pakistan’s religious schools or madrassas served as “incubators for violent extremism.” Since then, there has been much debate over madrassas and their connection to militancy.
***
New madrassas sprouted, funded and supported by Saudi Arabia and U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, where students were encouraged to join the Afghan resistance.
And see this.
Veteran journalist Robert Dreyfuss writes:
For half a century the United States and many of its allies saw what I call the “Islamic right” as convenient partners in the Cold War.
***
In the decades before 9/11, hard-core activists and organizations among Muslim fundamentalists on the far right were often viewed as allies for two reasons, because they were seen a fierce anti-communists and because the opposed secular nationalists such as Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Iran’s Mohammed Mossadegh.
***
By the end of the 1950s, rather than allying itself with the secular forces of progress in the Middle East and the Arab world, the United States found itself in league with Saudi Arabia’s Islamist legions. Choosing Saudi Arabia over Nasser’s Egypt was probably the single biggest mistake the United States has ever made in the Middle East.
A second big mistake … occurred in the 1970s, when, at the height of the Cold War and the struggle for control of the Middle East, the United States either supported or acquiesced in the rapid growth of Islamic right in countries from Egypt to Afghanistan. In Egypt, Anwar Sadat brought the Muslim Brotherhood back to Egypt. In Syria, the United States, Israel, and Jordan supported the Muslim Brotherhood in a civil war against Syria. And … Israel quietly backed Ahmed Yassin and the Muslim Brotherhood in the West Bank and Gaza, leading to the establishment of Hamas.
Still another major mistake was the fantasy that Islam would penetrate the USSR and unravel the Soviet Union in Asia. It led to America’s support for the jihadists in Afghanistan. But … America’s alliance with the Afghan Islamists long predated the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and had its roots in CIA activity in Afghanistan in the 1960s and in the early and mid-1970s. The Afghan jihad spawned civil war in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, gave rise to the Taliban, and got Osama bin Laden started on building Al Qaeda.
Would the Islamic right have existed without U.S. support? Of course. This is not a book for the conspiracy-minded. But there is no question that the virulence of the movement that we now confront—and which confronts many of the countries in the region, too, from Algeria to India and beyond—would have been significantly less had the United States made other choices during the Cold War.
In other words, if the U.S. and our allies hadn’t backed the radical violent Muslims instead of more stable, peaceful groups in the Middle East, radical Islam wouldn’t have grown so large.
Pakistani nuclear scientist and peace activist Perez Hoodbhoy writes:
Every religion, including Islam, has its crazed fanatics. Few in numbers and small in strength, they can properly be assigned to the “loony” section. This was true for Islam as well until 1979, the year of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Indeed, there may well have been no 911 but for this game-changer.
***
Officials like Richard Perle, Assistant Secretary of Defense, immediately saw Afghanistan not as the locale of a harsh and dangerous conflict to be ended but as a place to teach the Russians a lesson. Such “bleeders” became the most influential people in Washington .
***
The task of creating such solidarity fell upon Saudi Arabia, together with other conservative Arab monarchies. This duty was accepted readily and they quickly made the Afghan Jihad their central cause…. But still more importantly, to go heart and soul for jihad was crucial at a time when Saudi legitimacy as the guardians of Islam was under strong challenge by Iran, which pointed to the continued occupation of Palestine by America’s partner, Israel. An increasing number of Saudis were becoming disaffected by the House of Saud – its corruption, self-indulgence, repression, and closeness to the US. Therefore, the Jihad in Afghanistan provided an excellent outlet for the growing number of militant Sunni activists in Saudi Arabia, and a way to deal with the daily taunts of the Iranian clergy.
***
The bleeders soon organized and armed the Great Global Jihad, funded by Saudi Arabia, and executed by Pakistan. A powerful magnet for militant Sunni activists was created by the US. The most hardened and ideologically dedicated men were sought on the logic that they would be the best fighters. Advertisements, paid for from CIA funds, were placed in newspapers and newsletters around the world offering inducements and motivations to join the Jihad.
American universities produced books for Afghan children that extolled the virtues of jihad and of killing communists. Readers browsing through book bazaars in Rawalpindi and Peshawar can, even today, sometimes find textbooks produced as part of the series underwritten by a USAID $50 million grant to the University of Nebraska in the 1980′s . These textbooks sought to counterbalance Marxism through creating enthusiasm in Islamic militancy. They exhorted Afghan children to “pluck out the eyes of the Soviet enemy and cut off his legs”. Years after the books were first printed they were approved by the Taliban for use in madrassas – a stamp of their ideological correctness and they are still widely available in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
At the international level, Radical Islam went into overdrive as its superpower ally, the United States, funneled support to the mujahideen. Ronald Reagan feted jihadist leaders on the White House lawn, and the U.S. press lionized them.
And the chief of the visa section at the U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (J. Michael Springmann, who is now an attorney in private practice) says that the CIA insisted that visas be issued to Afghanis so they could travel to the U.S. to be trained in terrorism in the United States, and then sent back to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets.
1993 World Trade Center Bombing
New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau believed that the intelligence services could and should have stopped the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, but they were preoccupied with other issues cover. As well-known investigative journalist Robert I. Friedman wrote in New York Magazine in 1995:
Shiekh Omar Abdel Rahman commands an almost deified adoration and respect in certain Islamic circles. It was his 1980 fatwa – religious decree – condemning Anwar Sadat for making peace with Israel that is widely believed to be responsible for Sadat’s assassination a year later. (Rahman was subsequently tried but acquitted.)
***
The CIA paid to send Abdel Rahman to Peshawar ‘to preach to the Afghans about the necessity of unity to overthrow the Kabul regime,’ according to Professor Rubin. By all accounts, Rahman was brilliant at inspiring the faithful.
As a reward for his services, the CIA gave the sheikh a one-year visa to the United States in May, 1990 – even though he was on a State Department terrorism watch list that should have barred him from the country.
After a public outcry in the wake of the World Trade Centre bombing, a State Department representative discovered that Rahman had, in fact, received four United States visas dating back to December 15, 1986. All were given to him by CIA agents acting as consular officers at American embassies in Khartoum and Cairo. The CIA officers claimed they didn’t know the sheikh was one of the most notorious political figures in the Middle East and a militant on the State Department’s list of undesirables. The agent in Khartoum said that when the sheikh walked in the computers were down and the Sudanese clerk didn’t bother to check the microfiche file.
Says one top New York investigator: ‘Left with the choice between pleading stupidity or else admitting deceit, the CIA went with stupidity.’
***
The sheikh arrived in Brooklyn at a fortuitous time for the CIA. In the wake of the Soviet Union’s retreat from Afghanistan, Congress had slashed the amount of covert aid going to the mujaheddin. The international network of Arab-financed support groups became even more vital to the CIA, including the string of jihad offices that had been set up across America with the help of Saudi and American intelligence. To drum up support, the agency paved the way for veterans of the Afghan conflict to visit the centres and tell their inspirational war stories; in return, the centres collected millions of dollars for the rebels at a time when they needed it most.
There were jihad offices in Jersey City, Atlanta and Dallas, but the most important was the one in Brooklyn, called Alkifah – Arabic for ‘the struggle.’ That storefront became the de facto headquarters of the sheikh.
***
On November 5, 1990, Rabbi Meir Kahane, an ultra-right-wing Zionist militant, was shot in the throat with a .357 magnum in a Manhattan hotel; El-Sayyid Nosair was gunned down by an off-duty postal inspector outside the hotel, and the murder weapon was found a few feet from his hand.
A subsequent search of Nosair’s Cliffside Park, New Jersey home turned up forty boxes of evidence – evidence that, had the D.A.’s office and the FBI looked at it more carefully, would have revealed an active terrorist conspiracy about to boil over in New York.
***
In addition to discovering thousands of rounds of ammunition and hit lists with the names of New York judges and prosecutors, investigators found amongst the Nosair evidence classified U.S. military-training manuals.
***
Also found amongst Nosair’s effects were several documents, letters and notebooks in Arabic, which when eventually translated would point to e terror conspiracy against the United States. The D.A.’s office shipped these, along with the other evidence, to the FBI’s office at 26 Federal Plaza. ‘We gave all this stuff to the bureau, thinking that they were well equipped,’ says one source close to the D.A.’s office. ‘After the World Trade Centre, we discovered they never translated the material.’
According to other sources familiar with the case, the FBI told District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau that Nosair was a lone gunman, not part of a broader conspiracy; the prosecution took this position at trial and lost, only convicting Nosair of gun charges. Morgenthau speculated the CIA may have encouraged the FBI not to pursue any other leads, these sources say. ‘The FBI lied to me,’ Morgenthau has told colleagues. ‘They’re supposed to untangle terrorist connections, but they can’t be trusted to do the job.’
Three years later, on the day the FBI arrested four Arabs for the World Trade Centre bombing, saying it had all of the suspects, Morgenthau’s ears pricked up. He didn’t believe the four were ‘self-starters,’ and speculated that there was probably a larger network as well as a foreign sponsor. He also had a hunch that the suspects would lead back to Sheikh Abdel Rahman. But he worried that the dots might not be connected because the U.S. government was protecting the sheikh for his help in Afghanistan.
***
Nevertheless, some in the D.A.’s office believe that until the Ryder van exploded underneath New York’s tallest building, the sheikh and his men were being protected by the CIA. Morgenthau reportedly believes the CIA brought the sheikh to Brooklyn in the first place….
As far as can be determined, no American agency is investigating leads suggesting foreign-government involvement in the New York terror conspiracy. For example,Saudi intelligence has contributed to Sheikh Rahman’s legal-defence fund, according to Mohammed al-Khilewi, the former first secretary to the Saudi mission at the U.N.
Friedman notes that intelligence agents had possession of notes which should have linked all of these terrorists, but failed to connect the dots prior to 1993.
CNN ran a special report in 1994 called “Terror Nation? U.S. Creation?“, which noted – as summarized by Congressman Peter Deutsch:
Some Afghan groups that have had close affiliation with Pakistani Intelligence are believed to have been involved in the [1993] New York World Trade Center bombings.
***
Pro-Western afghan officials … officially warned the U.S. government about Hekmatyar no fewer than four times. The last warning delivered just days before the [1993] Trade Center attack.” Speaking to former CIA Director Robert Gates, about Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Peter Arnett reports, “The Pakistanis showered Gulbuddin Hekmatyar with U.S. provided weapons and sang his praises to the CIA. They had close ties with Hakmatyar going back to the mid-1970′s.”
This is interesting because it is widely-acknowledged that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was enthusiastically backed by the U.S. For example, U.S. News and World Report says:
[He was] once among America’s most valued allies. In the 1980s, the CIA funneled hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons and ammunition to help them battle the Soviet Army during its occupation of Afghanistan. Hekmatyar, then widely considered by Washington to be a reliable anti-Soviet rebel, was even flown to the United States by the CIA in 1985.
CIA Trained Ramzi Yousef and Other Key Terrorists
Moreover, Jane’s Defense Weekly – a respected and widely-cited British military journal – reported in October 2001 that Ramzi Yousef and the other World Trade Center bombers were trained by the CIA and ISI (via the Internet Archive):
Pakistan’s sinister Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) remains the key to providing accurate information to the US-led alliance in its war against Osama bin Laden and his Taliban hosts in Afghanistan. Known as Pakistan’s ‘secret army’ and ‘invisible government’, its shadowy past is linked to political assassinations and the smuggling of narcotics as well as nuclear and missile components.
***
The ISI chief, Lt Gen Mahmood Ahmed, who was visiting Washington when New York and the Pentagon were attacked, agreed to share desperately needed information about the Taliban with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other US security officials.The CIA has well-established links with the ISI, having trained it in the 1980s to ‘run’ Afghan mujahideen (holy Muslim warriors), Islamic fundamentalists from Pakistan as well as Arab volunteers by providing them with arms and logistic support to evict the Soviet occupation of Kabul.
***
After the ignominious Soviet withdrawal from Kabul in 1989 the ISI, determined to achieve its aim of extending Pakistan’s ‘strategic depth’ and creating an Islamic Caliphate by controlling Afghanistan and the Central Asian Republics, began sponsoring a little-known Pathan student movement in Kandhar that emerged as the Taliban. The ISI used funds from Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s federal government and from overseas Islamic remittances to enrol graduates from thousands of madrassahs (Muslim seminaries) across Pakistan to bolster the Taliban (Islamic students), who were led by the reclusive Mullah Muhammad Omar. Thereafter, through a ruthless combination of bribing Afghanistan’s ruling tribal coalition (which was riven with internecine rivalry), guerrilla tactics and military support the ISI installed the Taliban regime in Kabul in 1996. It then helped to extend its control over 95 per cent of the war-torn country and bolster its military capabilities. The ISI is believed to have posted additional operatives in Afghanistan just before the 11 September attacks in the US. Along with Osama bin Laden, intelligence sources say a number of other infamous names emerged from the 1980s ISI-CIA collaboration in Afghanistan. These included Mir Aimal Kansi, who assassinated two CIA officers outside their office in Langley, Virginia, in 1993, Ramzi Yousef and his accomplices involved in theNew York World Trade Center bombing five years later as well as a host of powerful international narcotics smugglers.
Ramzi Yousef was not only the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, but also a key member of the Bojinka Plot … the blueprint for 9/11.
Bosnia
As professor of strategy at the Naval War College and former National Security Agency intelligence analyst and counterintelligence officer John R. Schindler documents, the U.S. supported Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda terrorists in Bosnia.
2001
Former counter-terrorism boss Richard Clarke theorizes that top CIA brass tried to recruit the hijackers and turn them to our side, but were unsuccessful. And – when they realized had failed – they covered up their tracks so that the FBI would not investigate their illegal CIA activities , “malfeasance and misfeasance”, on U.S. soil.
And according to reports from Bloomberg, an ABC News investigative reporter and others, one of the main trainers of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda worked at various times for the CIA, FBI and Green Berets.
The bottom line, sadly, is that the U.S. has backed the world’s most dangerous and radical Muslim terrorists for decades. And see this.
Read more here:
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/03/blowback.html
Top 10 Signs that Reveal Mounting Panic in the World Banking System
Liberty Gold and Silver
We don’t want to cause you unnecessary stress or worry, but it might be prudent to pay attention to a series of unusual news reports recently emanating from the banking world. Viewed independently, each event might be rather insignificant.
However, when examined collectively, these events paint a very dire warning for the safety of bank deposits everywhere. Naturally, most all of these have received little to no coverage by the mainstream media. That is to be expected.
The MSM’s job one is to always obfuscate any potentially dangerous news that has a chance of frightening investors or depositors. After all, the goal of the world banking cartel/equities Ponzi scheme is to keep depositors and investors relaxed and passive in their comfort zones until the complete collapse of their positions is unavoidable.
Here is a timeline of these very disturbing banking events that have occurred since last fall:
1 – October 3, 2013: US banks fearing default stock up on cash. The Financial Times reported today that two of the country’s biggest banks are putting into place a “play book” as preparation for a possible banking panic. A senior banking executive reported that his bank has delivered 20 – 30% more cash than usual in cash panicked customers try to withdraw cash in mass.
2 – October 12, 2013: Food stamp card malfunction causes riots at Walmart stores in Louisiana. The technical problem that eliminated spending limits on food stamp debit cards sets off a bizarre shopping frenzy at Walmart stores in Louisiana.
3 – November 2 – 8, 2013: A reputed computer glitch wipes out ATMs and online banking on a massive scale. Major shutdowns of online banking occurred in Alabama, Arizona, and California and affected such banks as Wells Fargo, Chase, Bank of America, Compass, Chase Fairwinds Credit Union, American Express, and others. Tellers reportedly had a hard time with even simple transactions such as check cashing and checking balances. Rumors circulated on the internet that the banks are using this temporary shutdown as a beta test for a future full bank “holiday” closure.
4 – November 17, 2013: JP Morgan Chase halts international wire transfers from the US for many small businesses. Also, Chase alerted its small business customers that the total cash activity (the combined total of cash deposits and withdrawals made at Chase branches and ATMs, including money orders and cashier’s checks) is hereby limited to a total of $50,000 per business customer per billing cycle.
5 – January 16, 2014: Reports from Hong Kong indicate another HSBC scandal: an $80B capitalization shortfall. Forensic Asia, a Hong Kong based research firm, issued a “sell recommendation” on HSBC because of “questionable assets” on its balance sheet. The London Telegraph reported Forensic Asia’s warning that HSBC “had between $63.6B and $92.3B of ‘questionable assets’ on its balance sheet, ranging from loan loss reserves and accrued interest to deferred taxes.”
6 – January 24, 2014: HSBC imposes restrictions on cash withdrawals in Britain. Reports circulated that British HSBC customers have been suddenly refused cash withdrawals as low as 3,000 pounds. HSBC admitted that it did not inform its customers of the abrupt policy change. HSBC officers putatively suggested that it is “only for the protection of its customers.”
7 China’s Banking Problems are Escalating Fast. Beijing based ICBC, the world’s largest bank by assets, announced it will not take full responsibility for a trust investment equivalent to US $500 million that may go bust. ICBC, one of China’s “Big Four” banks, may be linked to a loan default very similar to the type that precipitated the Lehman Brothers crisis in 2007.
In fact, this may be only the tip of the iceberg that has an outside chance of bringing down the entire Chinese banking world. This ICBC “trust investment” is actually one of a vast array of loans that comprises China’s secret shadow banking system. It is estimated that China’s total shadow banking debt is now in excess of $4.7 trillion – a staggering figure for any market, let alone an unregulated one. It is believed that much of this secret lending system is fraught with high interest, high risk loans that contain a strong possibility of default. Any major failure in this market can only have catastrophic outcomes, for not only markets in China, but for all types of markets worldwide.
8 – January 28, 2014: One of Russia’s top two hundred lenders, “My Bank,” introduces a one week complete ban on cash withdrawals. The reputed reason is customers wishing to exit the declining ruble in exchange for other currencies.
9 – February 17, 2014: Chase imposes imposes new capital controls on cash deposits. Chase alerted customers that they must now present a valid ID when making any cash deposit and that the bank will now only accept cash deposits in the customer’s own account. As of February 1, 2014, Chase customers are asked for ID for cash deposits for their account while cash deposits for another customer’s account will be completely banned after March 3, 2014.
Some analysts speculated that such measures are a sign that banks are getting ready for economic turmoil and possible bank runs.
10 – February 20, 2014: Royal Bank of Scotland group announces lay-offs of 30,000 employees in coming months. The Financial Times reported that Britain’s largest state owned lender will shrink its work force by 30,000 and also pull out of “dozens of the 38 countries” in which it does business. As initially reported in Bloomberg (but later revised for online posting), this dramatic pull-back by RBS (which is 80% government owned), was strongly encouraged by British Prime Minister David Cameron, who undoubtedly has become concerned by the bank’s overextension in non-British markets. (A special thanks to David Lenihan of Wavesync Research LLC, for the tip on this story)
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/03/no_author/top-10-signs-of-panic-in-the-banking-system%E2%80%A8/
FBI Had Direct Link to Bin Laden—in 1993
By Russ Baker
The FBI had a human source in direct contact with Osama bin Laden in 1993 and discovered that he was eager to finance terror attacks on the United States, according to little-noticed testimony in a court case several years back.
The testimony, just reported by the Washington Times, underlines how poorly we understand the degree to which the federal government was interacting with Osama bin Laden and monitoring the activities of a network that came to be widely known as Al Qaeda.
The information, which emerged during an obscure employment dispute case filed by an agent, was provided by Edward J. Curran, who had been a top official in the Bureau’s Los Angeles office. “It was the only source I know in the bureau where we had a source right in al Qaeda, directly involved,” Curran told a nearly empty courtroom in 2010.
The source was credible enough that the Bureau was able to use his information to prevent an attack on a Los Angeles Masonic temple at the time.
Several former lawmakers involved with 9/11 reviews told the newspaper they were unaware of the FBI-Al Qaeda connection.
“I think it raises a lot of questions about why that information didn’t become public and why the 9/11 Commission or the congressional intelligence committees weren’t told about it,” said former Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), who chaired the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in the aftermath of the 9/11 report.
The Commission’s former executive director, Philip Zelikow, now a history professor at the University of Virginia, characterized the panel’s limited appetite for a long view of the events culminating on September 11, 2001. Of the 1993 time frame when the FBI apparently had its source into bin Laden’s outfit, he said, “We did not delve as deeply in this period because it was so distant from the plotting that led directly to the 9/11 attack.”
The notion that what was happening in 1993 had little to do with the 2001 attacks, however, is questionable. It was in 1993 that plotters who had been trained in Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan detonated a truck bomb beneath the North Tower of the World Trade Center in a plot that failed to bring the towers down. The alleged financier of that early attack, Khaled Sheikh Mohamed, is credited with coming up with the subsequent idea of crashing a plane into CIA headquarters and later conceptualizing the 9/11 attacks for Al Qaeda. Furthermore, an FBI informant, Emad Salem, was deeply involved with the 1993 plotters while apprising his Bureau handlers.
FBI Hotline to Osama
According to Curran’s testimony, the agent developed a source who was connected to Omar Abdel-Rahman, the so-called “Blind Sheik” credited with the 1993 Trade Center bombing. Even more significantly, the source went overseas and personally met with bin Laden. He was described as “very in tight, close,” to bin Laden’s leadership team.
While with bin Laden, the source learned that the Saudi had picked out a target for a bombing in the LA area—which is believed to have been a Masonic lodge. The FBI supervisor said the source also knew all about California-based cells.
The general thrust of Curran’s testimony was borne out by documents.
In a particularly revealing moment, Curran explained how the Al Qaeda source was pressured to cooperate, including by working with the source’s wife from an arranged marriage to first deport the source and then let him come back in return for betraying his comrades.
According to Curran’s testimony, the agent developed a source who was connected to Omar Abdel-Rahman, the so-called “Blind Sheik” credited with the 1993 Trade Center bombing. Even more significantly, the source went overseas and personally met with bin Laden. He was described as “very in tight, close,” to bin Laden’s leadership team.
While with bin Laden, the source learned that the Saudi had picked out a target for a bombing in the LA area—which is believed to have been a Masonic lodge. The FBI supervisor said the source also knew all about California-based cells.
The general thrust of Curran’s testimony was borne out by documents.
In a particularly revealing moment, Curran explained how the Al Qaeda source was pressured to cooperate, including by working with the source’s wife from an arranged marriage to first deport the source and then let him come back in return for betraying his comrades.
FBI Defaults to Not Remembering
The FBI, which has not in memory admitted to having withheld information from elected officials, predictably told The Washington Times that it could not document whether or not it had briefed the 9/11 Commission about the 1993 asset or plot. One question might be: Why not? Does it not keep records on briefings to government officials? The Times does not appear to have asked this of the Bureau, but did note its standard, highly qualified disclaimer, quoting Assistant Director Michael P. Kortan:
“The FBI made all relevant information available to the 9/11 Commission and the joint intelligence community inquiry. Throughout both of these reviews, the FBI shared pertinent documents and knowledgeable personnel in order to present all known information to commission and inquiry personnel.”
Of course, as Zelikow’s analysis underlines, words like “relevant” and “pertinent” are highly subjective and can be used to exclude crucial evidence that would fundamentally alter our understanding of major events.
In fact, the FBI clearly withheld the information about its Al Qaeda asset. Stephen Kohn, attorney for the FBI agent who filed the discrimination suit, Bassem Yousef, and who has represented numerous important FBI whistleblowers, said the information might never have come out through normal channels. Even his client did not reveal the Al Qaeda angle because it was classified—it only emerged in the legal proceedings.
“I was shocked when it came out, and I was frustrated because the FBI had censored that information clearly to hide it from the public,” said Kohn, who has represented some of the FBI’s most famous whistleblowers over the years.
“There was absolutely no reason for that to be kept secret,” he told The Washington Times. “In some respects, it was kind of demeaning for the FBI because they had kept secret one of the most significant triumphs in the war on terror all so they wouldn’t have to give credit to Bassem for the work he had done. As a result, none of the bureau got the credit it was due for what was a spectacular counterterrorism triumph.”
What Kohn seems to have missed—or perhaps could not say as it is not in his narrow purview as an attorney representing clients, is that it is hardly likely that the FBI withheld information about a source in Osama bin Laden’s inner circle and had to keep its successes quiet just to best one agent in a job dispute.
Indeed, had the FBI revealed what has only emerged now, everything would be different. For one thing, the 9/11 commission would not have been able to pooh-pooh notions that the 2001 attack had domestic roots going back years...
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/03/russ-baker/how-much-is-the-fbi-hiding/
